Words by Ben Jolley
It’s a lovely Monday evening when NME gets hold of buzzy New York trio . Jackson Walker Lewis is in his Lower East Side apartment and Ben Scharf is at home in Bushwick after picking up a dresser. Shanny Wise, meanwhile, is sitting atop a rock, fishing.
“The seals are mad annoying,” she says from her perch at Block Island. “They keep fucking my shit up!”
That’s exactly the sort of one-liner Wise tosses off as the vocalist of Fcukers. Over the past year, they’ve become an underground sensation, attracting the likes of Beck and Julian Casablancas with their off-kilter club bangers and chaotic live shows. It’s an unlikely second phase for everyone involved: having quit their bands at the same time, the three musicians were equally fed up with the music industry when they met.
“I was really jaded and thought, aged 25, my shot at a music career was over,” reflects Lewis. The bassist, keyboardist, producer and DJ was previously in Spud Cannon with drummer Scharf. The college-formed group won Vassar College’s Battle of the Bands competition, flew to Los Angeles to cut their debut record and landed a feature from actor Gary Oldman. Despite opening shows for Snail Mail and Speedy Ortiz after releasing their second album, Scharf refers to his old band’s music as “some nimby kimby indie rock bullshit” they “grew out of”.
“We don’t want people observing the concert, but really getting into it and dancing” – Ben Scharf
On the night the pair realised the band’s ship was going down, Lewis and Scharf – who shared a love of The Chemical Brothers – started jamming on house beats in their studio. In a bolt of perfect timing, a mutual friend introduced them to Wise, former frontwoman of The Shacks.
“I was over indie shit – I wanted to make beats or dubstep,” she says; her previous group’s Bandcamp bio reads “cinematic songs that soundtrack a mysterious alternate reality”. Lewis had just the thing: an early version of Fcukers’ brilliant single ‘Homie Don’t Shake’. When he and Scharf asked if she’d sing on it, Wise enthusiastically agreed: “Fuck yeah!” With each of the trio into different types of music – Scharf Soulwax, Lewis ’90s house and Wise reggae – the result was far removed from any of their previous projects, and far more like what they actually wanted to create.
Mostly, though, the trio were following their gut – an ethos linked with the name Fcukers. “We said ‘It’s for us’,” Lewis remembers, “Who cares about commercial viability?” This nonchalant attitude fed into the trio’s funny, often surreal and always quotable lyrics: “Say you’ll DJ at my wake” and “Champagne in my cornflakes” particularly resonated with Wise, who had been partying heavily. “It felt accurate to where I was: blackout, show up late vibes,” she says.
After six or seven months of what Lewis describes as “farting around on different vibes”, the trio started getting somewhere. Often, though, they’d create something that leaned too heavily on one genre, like disco or techno. The lightbulb moment finally came when they started writing their addictive debut single ‘Mothers’. Though the song was unfinished and Fcukers had yet to perform live together, the trio booked Baby’s All Right – a 280-capacity rite-of-passage hotspot in Brooklyn – for their first show.
Despite a chaotic run-up to the gig, the band’s “squad really showed up”, Scharf says. Wise felt similarly: “I was so used to playing shows where it would be really quiet, but this was so fun. It was a party; all our friends were there and we were dancing together.” Before that sold-out debut, however, Lewis fretted that “it could be terrible”. He needn’t have worried – it packed out, with a hundred people still left outside. Suddenly, they needed to plan a second.
“It just expanded off the back of that,” Scharf recalls. He’s not wrong – very quickly, Fcukers went from word-of-mouth tip to playing their first ten shows across four continents. The most unexpected was at Paris Fashion Week, where Hedi Slimane flew the band out to DJ at Celine’s closing party. “I thought we were the worst fit on the planet,” Lewis laughs. “We wear baggy pants and don’t play rock’n’roll.” “I wear shark tees, I don’t know much about fashion,” Wise giggles.
Throughout those early whirlwind months, which also included shows in Sydney and Tokyo, the trio were amazed to find that wherever they played, their two songs were known. Four people they didn’t expect to count as fans, let alone hang out with, were Beck, Julian Casablancas, Yves Tumor and Clairo, all of whom showed up to a show at New York’s Market Hotel. “I asked Beck, ‘What’s your favourite hobby?’” Wise remembers (the answer’s watercolouring, FYI).
“It’s for us – who cares about commercial viability?” – Jackson Walker Lewis
But how did Fcukers – who were also tapped for a remix of the James Murphy-featuring ‘Los Angeles’ by Lol Tolhurst, Budgie, and Jacknife Lee – become such a hot-ticket act so quickly? “It’s not like, ‘Oh, you’re watching us perform’, it’s a party that everyone’s included in,” Wise suggests. Scharf thinks that bucking the trend for band gigs is a factor, too – Fcukers normally go on stage at midnight and mostly play at clubs or “weird venues”, like unfinished swimming pools.
“When I started throwing parties and we had quit our [previous] band, I realised you can play at any time, anywhere – there’s no rules,” Lewis says. This energy extends to their actual performance: “The attitude is to not have people sitting and observing the concert, but really getting into it and dancing,” Scharf says.
That’s exactly what happened when – following a tour with Jockstrap – Fcukers headed to SXSW this year. “I’ve played to one person there before,” Lewis recalls, “but this last one… I felt like I was in Blur.” Their UK return – which included a roadblock Great Escape debut in Brighton and a 6pm rave in Sheffield – was similarly wild. But it was their post-downpour Pickle Factory show in London that proved rowdiest. “Everybody arrived soaking wet, and then the room got hot, so people were literally steaming,” Scharf recalls. “It was gross but fun.”
Considering they only have four songs out, it’s fair to say things have moved extremely quickly for Fcukers. Now, they’re gearing up to release their genre-spanning debut EP, ‘Baggy$$’. While Wise’s deadpan vocal delivery ties the record together, the beats across its six tracks are a pick ‘n’ mix of sounds and styles: from soft jungle roller ‘Never Give Your Heart Away’ to the trip-hop meets baggy Britpop of ‘I Don’t Wanna’, the M.I.A.-esque ‘UMPA’ and the bass-heavy lo-fi rumbles of ‘Tommy’. “I think it shows a lot of range, which was kind of on purpose,” Lewis summarises. “We wanted to show that we weren’t just one thing.”
Rather than setting big expectations, he’ll be happy if people connect with it. “That’s all you can ever hope for as an artist,” he says. Wise is characteristically less bothered: “I wouldn’t care if anyone ever hears it, I just love doing it.”
Perhaps expectedly, the trio are unfazed by the hype surrounding Fcukers. Self-described sceptic Lewis attributes this to his previous experiences in bands: “Ben and I were in a cramped minivan on tour, playing for no money to five people in Birmingham, Alabama.” “Or pulling up at 4am in Muskogee, Oklahoma,” Scharf adds.
So what is it about Fcukers that has helped to turn the tide for the trio? “Our project is fun for people to interact and engage with in the sense that it’s versatile,” Scharf suggests. “We can present it in different ways, from DJ sets to live shows.” Lewis thinks that sounding like little else is also helpful. “There’s so much music out there, but, in many ways, so much stuff has become really homogenous and sounds very similar.”
There’s also the band’s name and performance style that make them stand out, too. “When labels started hitting us up, I couldn’t believe no one else seemed to be doing something similar. It felt so obvious,” Lewis considers. “People would ask, ‘How was no band called ‘fuckers’ before?’”
Scharf agrees, citing electronic group Hot Chip as a personal inspiration. “I wondered why no other live band was doing this. Just like the name felt obvious, there seemed to be a gap in that.”
“I was over indie shit – I wanted to make beats or dubstep” – Shanny Wise
Arguably, their early 2000s-referencing sound has led to them being “lumped in”, as Lewis puts it, with the recent indie sleaze revival. While the trio did start writing “when all that stuff was blooming”, and they are friends with other bands in the current scene in New York, they have felt like the odd band out. “We wanted to do something else, and I’d argue we were the more original downtown vibe,” Lewis says.
That’s not to say the trio are against the “totally unavoidable” indie sleaze resurgence, though. “I don’t think it was consciously built. It just happened and it’s been talked about ad nauseam in the press,” Lewis adds. “All the power to it. I’m a fan of that genre, but I just don’t think we’re it.” Scharf isn’t convinced they’re electro-clash – as they’ve been billed on BBC Radio 1 – either. “We’re happy to take the play, though!” Lewis concludes.
Whatever you want to call it, there’s no denying that Fcukers are currently responsible for some of the most fun and addictive music out there. Having transcended their origins as New York’s worst-kept secret, the trio’s carefree energy is spreading around the world. It’s time to join the party – no invitation required.
Fcukers’ ‘Baggy$$’ is out September 6 via Ninja Tune/Technicolour.
Listen to Fcukers’ exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify and here on Apple Music
Words: Ben Jolley
Photography: Marisa Bazan
Label: Ninja Tune/Technicolour
[Editor’s note: this story has been corrected to note that Fcukers members’ former band Spud Cannon opened shows for Snail Mail and Speedy Ortiz. It previously stated that the band toured with both artists. This story has also been amended to clarify a quote by Fcukers’ Ben Scharf.]